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Sunday, June 14, 2009

Au Revoir CV Raman Nagar

A few weeks ago I bid farewell to the running route where I have been doing my weekday runs for nearly 15 years. I discovered the pleasure of running in the DRDO township area soon after moving to HAL 3rd stage in Bangalore in September 1994. During this period, except for a few brief periods of illness/injury, I have pretty much been running in this area 2-3 times a week. And I have seen the area transform tremendously. When I started running here, it was a sparsely populated area with very little traffic. The shade of trees on both sides of the broad road made it one of the best places to run in at least in Bangalore. I moved home from HAL 3rd stage to the 'remote' area of Bhuvaneswari Nagar in 1998. The landscape of the CV Raman Nagar area changed drastically in the early 2000s with the construction of the first building (TI) in Bagmane Tech park, the gas station and the consequent orders of magnitude increase in traffic. With this the DRDO township authorities starting putting restrictions on 'outsiders'. First they restricted cars from going through the township before 7am given the spurt in houses and flats on Kagadaspura road. And then from 2005 or so, non DRDO related personnel were disallowed from walking or running in the township. And since then I have had a few run-ins with the DRDO security staff. Nevertheless, I was able to continue managing to run in the CV Raman Nagar area by running from Bhuvaneswari Nagar via Byrasandra village into Bagamane Tech Park. By now the Tech Park had grown to host nearly dozen companies. And then a few months later the backdoor entry into the Bagamane Tech Park was also kept locked till 7am. For the last few weeks I had to try a few different routes to get my weekday runs and cycling in. My last run in this area was almost a month ago on 14th May - that is the day we moved home from CV Raman Nagar to Domlur Layout.

Since then I have been running in the RFL EGL route or the Inner Ring road area. While this does not have the hassles of the DRDO township security staff, both these routes are quite crowded with pedestrians and BPO vehicle traffic in the mornings. Also, this area is definitely more polluted and less green compared to CV Raman Nagar - I do miss my weekday runs there. I assume in a few weeks from now I will get used to this route and perhaps find some good company of other runners/cyclists from the Indiranagar/Domlur/Airport road area - I have already bumped into a couple of familar faces - Sunil Chainani and Shanavas. Or maybe I will start running in Cubbon Park more often as this is now half the distance from my home than it used to be.